I was mistaken for the intern. Here’s what it taught me about bias at work

Creating safety by changing who is centred, who is protected, and who is believed is hard. It requires leaders to give up the illusion that they can keep all their power and still call it equity, writes Premila Jina.

Recently, I sat in a packed conference room, watching a panel of Indigenous women take the stage.

They were powerhouses: seasoned directors, community leaders, women who carried both generational wisdom and the sharp edge of contemporary governance. As they spoke about the realities Aboriginal women face today in the age of AI, data, and an active pushback against diversity and inclusion, I felt something inside me sit up straighter. One woman in particular cut through the polite corporate air like a knife. She did not soften her words. She named injustice, intergenerational trauma, and the cost of being constantly asked to educate others. She was my favourite speaker, an unapologetic truth-teller.

When the session ended, I turned to a friend – a fellow attendee, someone in a position of real power and influence – and asked what she thought. Her face tightened. “I didn’t like her at all,” she said. “We’ve already said sorry. We do Acknowledgement to Country. What more do they want from us? They just need to move on.” Her words landed heavy. I felt my chest constrict, part disbelief, part recognition. This was not a stranger on the internet; this was a woman who benefited daily from a system built on the dispossession of others, telling me the ledger was settled with a few symbolic gestures. I could have shut down. Instead, I chose to lean in. Gently, I asked, “Do you really believe a single ‘sorry’ can heal generations of abuse, injustice, and brutality?”

Her frustration poured out: she was tired of feeling blamed for things she personally hadn’t done. I understood the discomfort, but I also knew how dangerous it is when people in power confuse their discomfort with oppression. I walked away from that conversation with a question ringing in my head: what does it mean to believe you’ve done enough, when those still living the consequences are telling you it’s barely the beginning?

That question had followed me into my workplace years earlier, in a moment I can still recall with perfect clarity. We were in the final stages of selecting a vendor for a major digital transformation project. The kind of deal that brings out everyone’s best suits and most polished performances. As a senior leader, I had been at the centre of this initiative from the start. We had invited one of the big four vendors to pitch, and they had flown in their so-called A-team to “seal the deal”. Two male leaders had asked if they could sit in on the demo, just to observe, not to influence the decision. I agreed, making it crystal clear that I owned the process and the outcome.

That morning, I dressed the part: sharp suit, deliberate posture, the quiet confidence of someone who knows they belong at the table. I went to greet the vendor team in reception. They met me with firm handshakes and that practised mix of charm and entitlement. We walked into the room together. I sat down, they sat beside me, and the male leaders took their seats diagonally opposite. Before anything else, the vendors turned to me and gave me their coffee orders, as if I were there to host, not to decide. I smiled and pointed out that morning tea would be served elsewhere, then began introductions, clearly stating my role and decision-making authority.

The moment they realised who the male leaders were, I watched the shift happen in real time. Their bodies angled away from me. Their eyes locked onto the men. It was as if an invisible door had closed, and I was left on the other side. From that point on, every question I asked was answered to the male leaders, not to me. The male leaders, to their credit, tried to redirect the conversation back to me, but their attempts were politely ignored. The vendors spoke over me, used jargon to re-explain what I already knew, and behaved as though I were a junior staffer tagging along. I was the buyer; they were the sellers. Yet they felt entitled to treat me as if my only function was to smile, nod, and take notes.

At one point, seeing my notebook open, they cheekily asked me to capture the male leaders’ questions for them. Their arrogance was so unguarded that they left their laptop screen angled just enough for me to see a chat message flash up: “This is easy, we’ve bagged this. The leaders are eating from our hands.” I sat there, the supposed power-holder, watching in real time as they dismissed my authority and congratulated themselves for securing a deal they had already lost. Two things happened after that meeting. First, they were not selected. Second, and perhaps more importantly, the male leaders experienced, for the first time, what it feels like to be a woman – and a woman of colour – in rooms where you hold responsibility but are treated like an accessory.

Later, I invited those leaders into a conversation. I told them this was not a one-off. This is my normal. In so many meetings, I am the one people automatically hand coffee orders to. I am the one expected to take minutes, chase actions, and tidy up the room while others rush off to “more important” things. My ideas are often ignored until repeated by a white man, at which point they are praised as brilliant. My proposals are scrutinised in red pen, while mediocre ones from male colleagues are gently developed and applauded. My decisions are cross-examined for risk, while theirs are framed as bold leadership, rewarded with “do it and ask for forgiveness later.”

When I name this, I am told I am being sensitive, overthinking, that I should “wear big boy pants” if I want to play at this level. The message is clear: their comfort matters more than my reality. These are not isolated incidents; they are micro behaviours that accumulate into macro consequences. They drain women of energy, ambition, and, eventually, presence. Women become the emotional shock absorbers, the cleaners of mess – both literal and metaphorical – while carrying the unpaid labour of keeping workplaces functioning and relationships smooth. We are overworked, underpaid, and under-acknowledged, then told to be grateful for being “included”.

In that conversation, my leaders listened. They were angry on my behalf. They apologised. And for the first time, I found the courage to say what had been sitting in my chest for years: “Sorry is not enough.” Sorry does not redistribute power. Sorry does not stop interruptions in meetings. Sorry does not shift office housework from women to men. Sorry does not change who gets sponsored for opportunities, who is believed, who is heard the first time they speak. Sorry is a starting point – but it is also a very comfortable place for those in power to stop.

So I asked them, very specifically, to move beyond comfort. When I am spoken over, I do not just need a sympathetic glance; I need someone to say, “She hadn’t finished – let’s hear her out.” When I am automatically assigned note-taking or asked to make coffee, I need a leader to intervene and redirect that expectation to someone else – preferably a man, to make visible that these tasks are not gendered. When women are cleaning up the emotional mess after a bruising meeting, I need leaders to address the behaviour that caused the mess, not quietly rely on women to keep absorbing it.

Naming this made the room uncomfortable. I could see it in their faces – the realisation that taking action would mean disrupting habits that had served them well. Saying “this is a safe space” at the start of a meeting is easy. Creating safety by changing who is centred, who is protected, and who is believed is hard. It requires leaders to give up the illusion that they can keep all their power and still call it equity. It asks them to risk their own comfort so that women, especially women of colour and Indigenous women, do not spend their careers paying the emotional and professional price for everyone else.

That week taught me that the “sorry” culture shows up everywhere – from conference halls where Indigenous women are told to move on, to boardrooms where women are treated as support staff regardless of title. My journey is no longer about quietly enduring and privately venting. It is about insisting that if you say you care about justice, you must prove it in what you do when it is inconvenient.

Sorry is where you begin. It is not where I am willing to end.

Premila Jina is the author of The Leader Unwritten and the founder of STA Advisory.